[bc-gnso] Article on IANA RFP Cancelation

[Phil Corwin <psc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

BC members may have some interest in an article I published yesterday on NTIA's 
cancelation of the IANA RFP. Comments, as always, are welcome ---



http://internetcommerce.org/NTIA_IANA_Cancel



NTIA: ICANN Not Qualified to Be Awarded IANA Contract – And Therefore Shall 
Keep Running IANA for the Present
Submitted by Philip Corwin on Mon, 03/12/2012 - 17:40


The ever-sunny skies over San Jose, Costa Rica were darkened by a dark cloud 
from Washington on the morning of March 10th, the opening day of activities at 
ICANN’s 43rd Public Meeting. The pall was cast by a notice posted by the 
Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information 
Administration (NTIA) stating that it had canceled the Request for Proposal 
(RFP) to administer the contract to operate the authoritative DNS root server 
per the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The brief NTIA notice 
stated that the cancelation occurred “because we received no proposals that met 
the requirements requested by the global community”. The NTIA statement can be 
found at 
http://ntia.doc.gov/other-publication/2012/notice-internet-assigned-numbers-authority-iana-functions-request-proposal-rf
 .


One of the applicants which failed to meet those requirements was ICANN, which 
currently administers the IANA functions – and will continue to do so until at 
least the unknown future time when NTIA reissues the RFP and decides there is a 
qualified applicant. The current contract under which ICANN administers IANA 
was set to expire at the end of September 2011, but had been extended by NTIA 
for six months while the RFP was in progress.


NTIA’s announcement apparently caught ICANN’s Board and senior staff by 
surprise, and its timing seems more than coincidental – indeed, it seems quite 
a deliberate shot across ICANN’s bow. When queried at a meeting between the 
Board and ICANN’s GNSO policymaking body as to whether he had any comment on 
the development, ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker responded with a terse “No”, 
adding that the Board had not yet had time to fully digest the unexpected 
development.


The NTIA noted that:


Based on the input received from stakeholders around the world, NTIA added new 
requirements to the IANA functions’ statement of work, including the need for 
structural separation of policymaking from implementation, a robust companywide 
conflict of interest policy, provisions reflecting heightened respect for local 
country laws, and a series of consultation and reporting requirements to 
increase transparency and accountability to the international community.


ICANN’s submission apparently fell short on one or more of these criteria, and 
will need to be beefed up when the RFP is revived if it is to retain the IANA 
function.


Three not altogether incompatible theories are swirling around the San Jose 
meeting as to the real reason for NTIA’s IANA cancelation:


  *   ·         NTIA wants to keep pressure on ICANN to build a higher wall 
between policy development and technical implementation, strengthen its 
conflict of interest rules, cooperate more with law enforcement and other 
national legal authorities, and give greater deference to the Governmental 
Advisory Committee (GAC) on policy matters generally and acceptable new gTLD 
applications in particular.
  *   ·         ICANN thought its re-awarding of the IANA contract was a 
foregone conclusion and failed to prepare an application that sufficiently 
“checked the boxes” on the new NTIA qualification criteria.
  *   ·         NTIA wanted to conclude the next contract with ICANN’s new, 
yet-to-be-announced CEO, who will succeed Rod Beckstrom at the June meeting 
scheduled in Prague.


We have no idea what the full rationale for NTIA’s action was. And it is still 
expected that ICANN will eventually be re-awarded the IANA contract, as 
shifting it to another party could be a mortal body blow to the organization. 
However, at a time when the new gTLD program is rolling forward (with 
speculation in San Jose that once the applicants are announced in May multiple 
lawsuits may ensue – both between applicants and against ICANN) and the 
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is maneuvering to supplant ICANN 
as the primary DNS operator, the U.S. declaration that ICANN is unqualified to 
operate the root zone function that is the technical foundation for its 
policymaking role  further weakens its reputation and adds to uncertainty over 
the future of Internet governance. It also provides ammunition to those ICANN 
critics who assert that such U.S. actions, even when exercised to provide 
greater leverage to the GAC, nonetheless illustrate that ICANN remains too 
closely tied to U.S. laws and policy aims.


None of this is welcome news for domain investors and the Internet community at 
large, and we can only hope that the situation will be resolved soon and 
satisfactorily. While ICANN is far from perfect, it continues to evolve and the 
multi-stakeholder governance model it embodies is preferable to any that gives 
governments alone the ultimate power over the future of the Internet.








Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal

Virtualaw LLC

1155 F Street, NW

Suite 1050

Washington, DC 20004

202-559-8597/Direct

202-559-8750/Fax

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"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey